


slow down, follow up

by anthropologicalhands



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Conversations in hallways, F/M, post 4x13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-01 10:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17865176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthropologicalhands/pseuds/anthropologicalhands
Summary: She's dealt with Greg and already apologized to Josh, but then there's Nathaniel. post 4x13.





	slow down, follow up

One day, Rebecca will have the foresight to text Nathaniel before showing up at his apartment to drop bombshells, but honestly the thought doesn’t even occur to her until she’s already in the elevator going up. She’s already nervous, so Rebecca reasons that she might as well just do what she has done so many times before: walk right up to his door and rap sharply against the wood until her knuckles sting.

Of course, Nathaniel should also use the peephole on his door more often, too; his eyes go comically wide, caught off guard to find her standing there.  Rebecca is tempted to laugh, until his expression morphs from surprise to concern in a split second; his gaze intent as he looks over her. She doesn’t entirely blame him, given recent events, but the fact that he feels the need to check at all sends a hot wave of shame right through her. Monitoring her needs and her mental state is _her_ responsibility—not the responsibility of others, and the more she realizes how bad it could have been, the worse the shame grows.

“Hey, Nathaniel.”

“Rebecca,” he says carefully, but now that he’s reassured that she isn’t three sheets to the wind, there’s a slight smile playing across his mouth. _Somehow,_ he’s still happy to see her, and her stomach _still_ turns over at the very idea. Meanwhile, the itch to run away and just avoid the entire conversation increases, but that discomfort is familiar enough that she can push past it; they are in a weird place and she’s the reason and she needs to deal with it and clear the air.

“Sorry to interrupt your night, but, uh, do you have a minute?” She tries to go for a rueful smile, but the strain at the corners is too much to maintain it.

“Yeah. Is everything okay?” He leans against the doorframe and tucks his hands in his pockets; he might have a smile ready for her, but his posture is still wary. It doesn’t seem like he will be inviting her in, and that’s…fine. Of course it’s fine, given the events of last week. She can’t just barge in on people’s lives the way she has done in the past, intruding into their spaces—his space—with nary a thought. Especially not when she was the one to end their relationship and when he was finally ready to step away.

“Sort of. I wanted to talk to you about…what happened last week.” She takes a deep breath to steady herself, tugging the ends of her blue cardigan a little more tightly around herself. “It’s a little late, but there was some fallout I had to deal with, and then Paula was in the hospital—”

“Yeah, I understand,” Nathaniel says, a little too easily. “But look, I don’t know if that’s really necessary. You were pretty drunk—”

“No, it definitely is,” Rebecca cuts in, because no way is she going to him make excuses for her again. “What I did was completely uncalled for, and I really owe you an explanation. Or, if you want a different way to frame it, some additional context. I know you like context.”

He nods reluctantly. “Okay, yes, I do like context.”

“Right.” Relieved that she will be able to say her piece, she starts again, “So, the context is that before you saw me: I was not having a great day.”

“That tracks.”

She nods and takes another deep breath before continuing. “I…hadn’t been monitoring my BPD situation as closely as I should have, so I had a disagreement with my therapist. And then I had a fight with Greg that…wasn’t great, and mostly my fault. I went out, had three drinks, and tried to pretend I wasn’t angry and sad. But it didn’t work, and I was completely revved up and full of this…energy that wasn’t going anywhere and was just _coursing_ through me and when I went to see you, I was really looking for—”

“An outlet,” he finishes, and God, if the situation wasn’t so mortifying there are _so many_ dirty jokes she could play off that, but it is and she can’t. Especially not with whatever multitude of microexpressions are crossing Nathaniel’s face right now, that he tries to distract from her by clearing his throat and crossing his arms over his chest. “For the excess of bad energy. Right. Got it. Then what?”

 His expression is neutral, which should be better than angry but also means she can’t read him _at all_ in this moment, when usually he is so open to her; she squirms at the creep of the self-recrimination crawling up her spine.

“Well, after you very sensibly asked me to leave, I went home and I ended up having a, uh, weird massage moment with Josh, which freaked us _both_ out.”

“Ah.” Something shifts in Nathaniel’s expression at Josh’s name: not significantly, but his smile is gone. He pulls himself together quickly, though, shaking off whatever feeling that he doesn’t want her to see. “But nothing happened with him, either?”

“No. Again…we were freaked out. Enough that I ended up going to talk to Dr Shin about getting on track.”

“Right. That’s…good, though, isn’t it?”

“I mean, in general, it really is. I know why I did that, and with hard work, it won’t happen again. But that doesn’t change what _did_ happen,” says Rebecca, twisting her hands together into different configurations, forcing herself not to look away. There is no blame or harshness in Nathaniel’s eyes, but it’s not the look she is used to seeing, either; it’s like a screen placed before the light and whatever message she is searching for is being heavily filtered. “And that’s why I’m here. To apologize for coming over and…basically trying to seduce you. Especially after we left things in such a good place, coming over like that might have…blown things wide open. I’m sorry about that.”

Nathaniel gives a short, tight nod, and glances down at his feet, cheeks puffing out as he exhales.

“It was confusing,” he admits, studying the patterns on the hallway floor.

“I know. I was in a bad place, but that isn’t an excuse,” she says, heart sinking. Despite her hopes, she doesn’t feel any ease for having apologized. “Is there…anything you want to ask me?”

Nathaniel looks up and away, staring over her head at some fixed point in the opposite wall. He rubs a hand hard behind the back of his neck; when his hand drops away she can see red marks on his skin from the drag of his fingers.

“When you came over…you said that you still thought about me,” he says quietly. “Do you remember saying that?”

He’s giving her another out—one that she probably should take, since she doesn’t have an answer, at least, not one that adequately encompasses the swirl of emotions stirred up by her frustration.

She was hurt and looking for validation and she knew he would give it to her. But there was also the twisted justification: how she told herself that she _was_ being honest, that she did still think about him, and wanted him at times even when he wasn’t directly in front of her. That for so long before they fell out of sync he had made her happy, and she knew she could make him happy. If he accepted her, they would both have what they wanted, and what was so wrong with that?

But it would have still been completely unfair, for inevitably she would have regretted it the morning, and any progress they have made towards a potentially peaceful relationship might actually have been irrevocably destroyed. Rebecca bites her lip and looks down at her sandals, thinking through her answer.

“I do, actually,” she says slowly, carefully, to be as clear as possible. “But I said them because I was feeling bad, and I thought you still wanted me and that if you saw that I wanted _you_ , you would just…follow my lead.”

_Like you used to._

Like nothing had changed between them. Like neither of them had been making an active effort to be better.

She hates the way Nathaniel passes a hand over his eyes and exhales a shaky breath.

Her automatic impulse is to reassure him, tell him that there’s more— that it _was_ about him, albeit in a twisted way—she didn’t choose his doorstep instead of returning home to Josh on a whim. Her feelings for all of them are muddled these days, but she does have reasons for the choices that she makes, that she has always been assured by the fact of Nathaniel’s interest and conviction in her, and after being told by seemingly everyone that she didn’t know what was best for herself, she wanted that validation from him.

She wants _so many things_ , these days. Her second chance with Greg. The continued comfort of Josh’s presence in her life. To taste Nathaniel’s tenderness again. Just because she can catalog her emotions, can press ‘pause’ long enough to parse through and understand her reactions, doesn’t mean she isn’t still a ball of conflicting desires.

But none of that would be right to say, and so she waits, uncomfortably, while Nathaniel straightens back up and looks at her again, his expression painfully, meticulously even.

“All right, good to know,” he says, his voice flat. “That settles some things I’ve been trying to understand. Thank you, for explaining that. It’s a nice change.” His tone is not acerbic, despite his words, she still bristles in the beat before the implications sink in and he immediately backtracks.

“No, wait—shit. Rebecca, I didn’t mean it like that. I—just that, well, things with us have been frequently confusing in the past.” He scrubs a hand through his hair in frustration and abruptly steps out of the doorframe, not in her space but without as distinct of a line between them. She freezes, unsure how to react at having him half again as close; he freezes, clearly not sure where to go next, and crosses his arms back over his chest defensively.

“I get it this time. I get that whatever brought you here last week wasn’t about me. It’s…kind of a relief, to know that for sure. Even when you showed up last week, it was clear that you weren’t…entirely all there. You didn’t have to come here today to explain what happened, but you did, so…thank you, for that,” he finishes lamely. “I appreciate it.”

Rebecca absorbs his explanation silently, still a little off-kilter by having him closer, and compensates by folding her arms over her chest, unintentionally mirroring his posture.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I’m glad. It really wasn’t about you, or Josh, or even Greg; it was about me not taking care of myself. And that was my fault and it’s my responsibility. I’m going to get back on track, I have a plan, and I am going to get back into all of the old stuff. All of it. And add some new stuff, on top of that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She takes a deep breath, steeling herself. “Actually, as part of getting back into regulating my BPD, I’ve started medication. All those months of resisting, and it turns out, they aren’t such a big deal after all.”

His head jerks down to look at her properly, blinking. The next time he shifts in the doorframe, the lines of him are not so rigid. His surprise isn’t entirely unexpected; she’d talked to him once or twice when they shared an office, but the fact he doesn’t immediately recoil is a surprising relief.

“Really?”

She forces a laugh. “Yeah, I know. Except, you know, adjusting to the dosages. Right now, I still fall asleep everywhere, even standing up. But that should pass.”

“Yeah, unexpected narcolepsy can make things just a little inconvenient,” he says, drawing a smile from her. “But they’re working? You’re doing better now?”

“I am.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

He smiles at her again, and some of her old affection for him rises, unbidden, from all of the places she sought to push it away—threatening to make her jittery with it—unless she says exactly what is on the tip of her tongue.

“Nathaniel?” she asks quietly.

“Yeah?” His voice is equally soft.

“I meant what I said, about liking what you said in our last conversation. The one you had with sober Rebecca and not the vodka wearing a Rebecca-dress.” He huffs a laugh at that; grinning, Rebecca continues, “I said it at the time, and I’ll say it again: it really meant a lot to me to hear you say that you wanted me to be happy.”

“Thanks.” His smile slips a little, and he takes another breath, fingers swiping absently at his temple. “But, uh, while we’re on the subject of things that need to be said…I know I never apologized to you.”

The affection that was making her nearly dizzy abruptly freezes and congeals along her insides.

“Really?” she forces out, suddenly fearful that whatever uneasy, careful moment they have managed to share will be wrecked again somehow.

Nathaniel nods, working his jaw before he speaks. “For what happened with your brother, but also…everything else that have happened, these last few months. I owe you that much, at least.”

When she had broken up with Nathaniel, this last time, she had done so in the belief that they would have no reason to speak to each other, that all arguments, hurts, and curiosities would be rendered null and void. That none of these things have turned out to be quite true has always been a little perplexing (then again, who expected her and Josh, of all people, to renew their friendship), so the sudden _want_ that rises up in her, at the possibility of having that closure, is easy to accept and difficult to resist. 

“Okay," she says slowly, straightening up and squaring her shoulders. "I would like that.”

“Yeah.” He nods, and an uneasy silence falls between them, until Rebecca raises her eyebrows meaningfully at him.

“Well?” she prompts.

He blinks, discombobulated.

“Wait, you meant  _now?_ ”

“I mean,” she shrugs. “I am here.”

There’s a vaguely panicked look on his face. “Look, I am sorry—I can say ‘I’m sorry’ right now and completely mean it. But I was thinking that this might be something we need to sit down for.”

Part of Rebecca, the squishy part, wants to tell Nathaniel not to worry about it—let bygones be bygones. But if she is honest with herself, it’s also the easy way out. Facing the ways they have misunderstood and hurt each other over the last year is not an easy task, and as the efforts of new Greg and new Rebecca have shown, no matter how painful or easily glossed over they seem, past wrongs need to be dealt with.

“I agree, but if it’s not now, would you be able to wait for me? Getting back into my stuff is going to take up a lot of time.”

“I could do that,” he agrees. “Gives me more time to prep flashcards.”

She laughs. “Well, be careful for what you wish for, because you are going to have a lot of prep time. This taking-care-of-myself thing is gonna take time. Like, a lot of time. Nearly all of the time that I’m not spending with Paula. Like, even Greg and I are, um—” she falters.

“Split up?” finishes Nathaniel helpfully. At her questioning, owl-eyed look, he elaborates, “I ran into him at Home Base and he, uh, mentioned it.”

“Oh,” she says, blinking. “Wow, okay, cool. Coolcoolcool.” She isn’t entirely sure how she feels that he already knows—she wasn’t planning on keeping it a secret, but having Nathaniel know that she’s single again makes her stomach squirm in confusing ways. “Yeah. Between therapy and dealing with the new meds and Paula, there was a lot to take care of. But we’re still friends, at least. That’s something.”

Nathaniel nods. “That’s how he put it, too.”

“Really? That’s nice. I mean, we also can’t get around the fact that this is like, the third time I’ve tried to have sex with someone else after one of our dates went wrong and I don’t know much about baseball, but I’m pretty sure that _three strikes, you’re out_ is very much still in play.”

She can see the way Nathaniel’s eyebrows shoot up high on his forehead that this is new information to him. Good. Not that she expected Greg to say anything, but it’s good to have confirmation.

“Uh—sure, I guess. I’m sorry about Greg. I know you were happy with him.”

“Thank you. And I was, but with my issues, being happy doesn’t magically fix anything.”

“I’m getting that,” says Nathaniel, almost ruefully, very differently from the other times they had circled the same subject. She tilts her head at him, struck by a sudden thought.

“How _do_ you know Greg, anyways? I mean, you guys showed up together on my porch a few weeks ago, but I never really got around to asking—”

“We met at the gym. Technically through Whijo, except he was no help at all. And then we kind of spent several hours together locked in quarantine for squirrel flu. Josh was there, too,” he adds, as if that fact is a mitigating factor, rather than a multiplier. She does not need to think about all of her exes together in one room.

Although the hospital setting has the potential for…rather _intriguing_ scenarios, actually…

But that is neither here nor there.

“That sounds like a story,” she says.

“Not a fun one. There was a dumb fight and we crashed the children’s ward. You don’t need to know more than that.”

“I feel like I kinda do,” needles Rebecca, starting to grin.

Nathaniel pulls an exaggerated face, shaking his head. “You really don’t.”

She laughs, and he smiles reflexively at her.

“Wait, you saw him before we broke up, then. And you didn’t tell him about me coming to your apartment?”

“That…wasn’t really the kind of situation I wanted to deal with while trapped in a sick ward.”

“Yeah, that probably would have been awkward,” she agrees, and pokes him gently in the shoulder. “Well, I’ll let you know when I have some time, and _you_ let me know when you have your material down cold.”

He exhales softly and smiles down at her. “I will.”

For the first time in a long while, she leaves Nathaniel’s apartment feeling that things are pleasantly open-ended, without being open to interpretation.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, we do have a break, and I do hope we have this conversation between the two of them in future eps.


End file.
